References to PowerPoint and “slide decks” show up throughout former U.S. Attorney Anton Valukas’s brutal, 315-page dissection of how GM executives failed to act on evidence of deadly defects in its cars. There’s a good reason. Lengthy slide presentations have been a substitute for meaningful communication at GM since before Microsoft’s ubiquitous PowerPoint software was invented.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, company executives would lull outside directors with slide shows about their strategies to boost sales and stop growing losses in the U.S. operations – until the directors woke up as the company veered toward collapse in 1992, ousted the top management and promoted a new team committed to…changing the corporate culture.

More than two decades later, Mr. Valukas’s review of management incompetence at GM shows neither that earlier effort at cultural revolution, nor the more recent trauma of being bailed out by U.S. taxpayers, made a big enough dent.

In one example of the numbing barrage of slides that obscured important information about safety risks, the Valukas report says that in March 2009, as GM was sliding toward its government-led bankruptcy, former GM CEO Rick Wagoner “may have viewed” a 72-slide presentation that mentioned, in a “back-up slide,” a change in the design to the Chevrolet Cobalt’s key that replaced a slot for attaching key rings to a small hole.

The change was described as a move to reduce warranty costs arising from complaints that the ignition switch could slip out of the run position because of the force from a heavy key chain swinging in a wide slot.

Now, of course, it’s clear those complaints were a vital clue to a grave issue. If the switch turned off just before a crash, there would be no power to the airbags, and no power assist for steering and brakes. GM now connects 13 deaths to the defect; lawyers for victims say the number is much higher.

In any case, Mr. Valukas’s report states that Mr. Wagoner doesn’t recall reviewing “any part of the slide deck.”

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Mr. Wagoner may well have had more important matters on his mind, given that his company was about to collapse in the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history. Just three weeks later, he resigned as CEO under pressure from the Obama administration.

Slide decks play a role in other baffling episodes in the ignition switch recall story.

In 2012, a GM engineer uses a bullet point in a PowerPoint slide in an effort to explain a theory about why data from the “black boxes” on cars that crashed without triggering the airbags showed that the ignition switch was on. “Neither the plain text of this bullet point nor its implications are crystal clear,” the report notes.

In December 2013, a committee of three senior executives in GM’s engineering, quality and manufacturing staffs gathered as the “Executive Field Action Decision Committee” to review a proposal to recall Cobalts to fix the ignition switch problem.

An engineer who’d been investigating the problem presented PowerPoint slides – but apparently didn’t discuss “backup” slides that made reference to five deaths and some serious injuries.

The report details confusion among the engineers and executives over what was in the slides, which slides were presented and which were not.

One engineer told Mr. Valukas he did present the slide. Three other executives at the meeting said they didn’t recall fatalities being discussed. Others who attended the meeting said they didn’t learn about the deaths until later.

Alicia Boler-Davis, GM’s senior vice president for quality and a member of the committee, told investigators that “backup slides” to presentations usually aren’t distributed or presented, but that death and injury data “should always be included” in a discussion of a proposed recall.

The committee didn’t act on the Cobalt issue in December because members decided they didn’t have enough data. (The report notes that it took a unanimous vote to launch a recall.) It took another six weeks for the committee to reconvene. When they did, they agreed to recall 2005-2007 Cobalts, but not other cars with a similar switch design that GM later would recall.

Ms. Boler-Davis told investigators she first learned of the fatalites in early February 2014 during a call that included Ms. Barra, GM’s general counsel Michael Millikin and Mark Reuss, the head of global product development.

Ms. Boler-Davis also told investigators “that had she known at the time of the December 17, 2013 EFADC meeting that fatalities were involved, she would have treated the issue with more urgency.”

Indeed. What if someone had simply stood up, without a visual prop, and said: “People are dying.”

Comments (5 of 32)

PowerPoint is not to blame! Poor management and communication are to blame. A company as large as GM should be able to use a great tool like PowerPoint effectively, it is not difficult to use or get a point accross. Companies use it all the time to powerfully and effectively communicate.

9:02 pm June 9, 2014

Simon wrote:

This is such a school boy article.. A bad tradesman blames his tools..

5:42 pm June 9, 2014

Joe O'Bryant wrote:

"Lengthy slide presentations have been a substitute for meaningful communication at GM since before Microsoft’s ubiquitous PowerPoint software was invented" - I think this answers the question posed by this article's headline.

2:32 pm June 9, 2014

Wilhelm Graupner wrote:

If you choose to move casualties into the backup slides, your problem IS NOT YOUR PRESENTATION SOFTWARE. I am puzzled by the attempt to construe such a connection.